‘You have taken me well beyond the edge of my comfort zone – and now there’s no way back.’

Part of what I do for a living is what I call Targeted Executive Support.  I don’t promote it but friends in the IoD and other network groups, as well as those leaders I have worked with, keep a steady stream of people knocking on the door looking for focused, short-term support in their business /professional world. Usually it is connected with improving the impact they have on their roles, their business or their career. Had we gone too far this time?

The guy who I quoted above is a successful FD. He said this yesterday, whilst we were wrapping up in our final session. I asked him if he knew anything of Christopher Logue and he didn’t. Excellent! Another opportunity to introduce someone to this under-appreciated 2005 Whitbread Poetry Award winner poet and his wonderful poem, ‘Come To The Edge’ which has inspired my training and support practice for over a decade now. Here’s the poem:

Come to the edge.
We might fall.
Come to the edge.
It’s too high!
COME TO THE EDGE!
And they came,
and he pushed,
and they flew.

©Christopher Logue

Thank you Christopher, for your inspiration. Thank you also for being a poet that has a life outside the rarefied world of Poetry! By the way, for many years on the web this poem was incorrectly attributed to the French poet Guilliame Apollinaire. This is being slowly rectified. So now, you, dear reader, can spread the word and clear the confusion.

Here is a good place to start learning about Christopher Logue , the poet, then look for his CND work, his Private Eye contributions and other ‘lives’.